In a blow to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, two Trinamool Congress MLAs joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday. Another MLA belonging to CPM and over 50 councillors also joined the saffron party today. This comes as a huge snub to Mamata who suffered reverses in the Lok Sabha battle.
West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress recently suspended its MLA and BJP leader Mukul Roy's son Shubhrangshu Roy for six years alleging that he was "demeaning the party". And guess what, he is one of the two TMC MLAs who has joined the BJP today. Joining along with him was TMC's Tusharkanti Bhattacharjee and CPM's Devendra Roy.
They joined the BJP at the party's headquarters in New Delhi in the presence of BJP general secretary Kailash Vijaywargiya and Mukul Roy.
Mukul Roy is seen to be instrumental in engineering the defection of TMC leaders to the BJP and, political watchers believe, he is one of the key architects of the party's best ever show in West Bengal, where TMC president Mamata Banerjee is in power since 2011.
In the Lok Sabha polls, the TMC fell to 22 seats from 34, while the BJP's tally zoomed to 18 from two.
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